Update - Jan 18, 2013 - Updated code to exclude newlines from the actions and embedded code as a Gist. Want your RoboBrrd (or any other Arduino app) to obey your every command? Here's a quick script using Florian Schultz' Speech to Text Library (STT). This script will change the color ...

Ran into a problem installing the Arduino Leonardo on Windows 8 yesterday and I thought it would be useful to other people (including me, when my memory fails) to document the solution. Although the Leonardo does not require FTDI drivers, it still requires the COM port drivers to be installed. Windows ...

As Hugo helpfully commented in a previous post, here is the link to the Power Monitor Patent. The specific page I'm linking to is the Packet model. Lots of reading to do here, but its pretty interesting. One of the things I find most interesting about this patent is the citations ...

Ages ago I bookmarked a design posted on Make for a Scooter Bike, as I intended on building one when my daughter got old enough. On a recent trip to the surplus store I picked up a wheelset for $3 and figured what better time to start than now. I ...

Following the previous success where we managed to see the transmissions from the Black & Decker Power Monitor, Andrew Kilpatrick and I went about trying to capture the packets. Without an access to an oscilloscope with packet capture capabilities we built our own with an Arduino. Essentially, the code waits for ...

Black & Decker makes an interesting product called the Power Monitor. The monitor straps on to your hydro meter and reports the revolutions of a spinning disc or blinks of an IR LED depending which model of meter you have. It then broadcasts that reading to a handheld unit inside ...

Recently I had a discussion with someone from the South Riverdale Community Health Centre on Air Quality monitoring in Ontario (AQI). I learned a number of things, there are only 40 Air Quality Monitors in Ontario and they test for six key indexes. Toronto runs a slightly different test, the ...

Its been a busy couple of months! Through work we've launched the Count Me In Ontario website and an upcoming energy visualization tool in cooperation with the IESO. I've also been busy hacking the Black & Decker Power Monitor with some interesting results. Coincidentally enough, its Clean Air Day and ...

Recently I've been experimenting with online coding tools, wonderfl and Bespin. Essentially both are IDE's enabling you to write code with syntax highlighting. Wonderfl enables coding for the Flash environment, while Bespin works in the HTML/JavaScript spectrum. There's some pretty immediate differences, Bespin is an attempt at building an environment ...

22 hours ago #atoc trended to number 9 on the Twitter trend chart. The Amgen Tour of California was in its first official leg and it was doused in rain. Cloud cover was so low it kept helicopters grounded and radio transmissions were inconsistent. But the Tweets were coming fast and ...